BBC News Online, Monday 30 July 2001. Edward
Gierek, the communist leader who opened Poland to the
outside world, has died aged 88. Gierek ruled the country
for 10 years before being swept from office in 1980, in a
wave of food price protests that led to the emergence of
Solidarity, the Soviet bloc's first trade union.

Obituary, The Times Online, 28 June
2002. Lidia Ciolkosz, who died just two weeks short of her
100th birthday, was from her earliest student days in Poland
a democratic socialist opposed to totalitarian communism and
to fascism in all its forms.

The Irish Times, Wednesday 17 August
2005. Lech Walesa scaled the walls of the Gdansk shipyards
and founded a trade union after a strike over poor
conditions. Its agenda rapidly expanded over the following
year to embrace a mass movement involving many layers of
Polish society united by a call for bread and freedom.